Thank you everyone for posting your stories, they've really made me feel like I'm not alone for the first time in years.
I've been told my whole life that I'm not allowed to talk about my family to anyone and it would make me an evil person but I've been under so much stress that I'm going to write my thoughts down and if it's traced back to me and I lose them then that's how it is. Otherwise I feel like I could crumble.
My person(s) are my parents. I'm 99% sure my mum is an alcoholic and I'm not sure if I'd classify my dad as alcohol dependent or just a habitual drinker (he has drunk every single night for decades - probably since I was born - but usually in moderate amounts - more on a non-work night - and he has a home breathalyser so if it's a work-night he stops in-time to be under the limit for when he commutes in the morning.)
My mum had a bad upbringing and both of them suffered intense trauma before I was born that they've never recovered from. My dad has always drunk but I never noticed it as a problem when I was a kid. My mum swears that she never drunk a single alcoholic drink when my sister and I were kids but I remember that we used to have a bottle of cider always in a cupboard. I mentioned it to my mum recently and she said it was my dad's and that she never had a drop but I feel like she did and she's lying to me but I can't remember enough to know if she's telling the truth. I've also got a couple of photos of her with me when I'm young and she has the 'drunk' look on her face that I've seen so many times now.
When I was in my early teens (almost 20 years ago) she had a massive breakdown and attempted suicide and I pretty much became her mental health carer. She started on anti-depressants but she's admitted to me that they don't work but she doesn't want to try any others in case they work less. Both of my parents believe that therapy is morally wrong and so she's never got any more help. She had to leave work on medical grounds and hasn't worked since.
I remember being in my late-teens and I know she didn't drink then. My nana would encourage her to "just have one" whenever she went out with us and, when I was around 21, she did have "just one" and things spiralled from there.
I finally managed to move out when I was 22 and she wasn't an alcoholic at that point. I noticed that she was getting drunk more often though and when I was 24 I realised that it was becoming a real problem. I'm 34 now and it's only got worse since.
I haven't seen her since before lockdown one but the last time I saw her she was in an absolute state. She gets drunk every single day. A 'light day' consists of a bottle of wine and four cans of cider. A very bad day can be two bottles of wine and six cans and a couple of cocktails or even more. Her drinking has slowly gone from 'drunk by 9pm every day' up to now 'drunk by 4pm every day' and it's only climbing earlier. She says that it's fine because she "goes to bed early" but she only goes to bed because she's too drunk to stay awake. Both of them say that they can't sleep unless they drink or they have nightmares about their traumatic experience so they're both self-medicating with alcohol to an extent.
I've lost count of the amount of times she's burned her hands and arms trying to fill up a hot water bottle and then not noticed until the next morning. She can't feed herself when she's drunk, she just lies her head on the table and pours the food partly into her mouth. She can't stand up either, she crawls around the floor like a two-year-old and can barely talk, just mumbles unintelligibly. She'll eventually throw a tantrum and then my dad will 'put her to bed' where she crawls up the stairs and then lies in bed eating chocolate (one day I'm sure she'll choke on it and that will probably be the end of her. She's choked on food when drunk many times already).
She has severe memory loss when she drinks. I came out as a lesbian in Oct 2019 (I waited so long because I knew my parents wouldn't be happy and I didn't want to upset them) and when she's sober she's 'fine' with it but I've had so many phone calls from her telling me how awful I am for choosing to be gay and how much I've upset her and how she wants to have a proper daughter and how I'm doing this to spite her and that if I loved her I'd be straight and so many horrible things. Then she doesn't remember that she's said them and when I tell her she says "no, I wouldn't say that, I'm fine with it."
I'm not allowed to be upset with her. If she does something to upset me I have to forgive her straight away otherwise she'll start to panic and says her depression will get worse because of me. It doesn't matter what she's done, I just have to shrug my shoulders and move on and never mention it again because she's sorry and that should be enough and it isn't fair to blame her for something that she's sorry about.
She lies about how much she drinks. I've banned her multiple times from calling me when drunk and I can tell by her voice when she's been drinking but she'll swear that she hasn't and on the sixth time of asking she'll laugh and say she's only had a couple so it doesn't count. I can't not answer the phone though in case she is actually having a crisis. Then, the next morning, she'll say that she's sorry and I have to forgive her and we go round this merry-go-round again and again and again.
I've lost hope that she'll change. She's starting to be affected physically by the alcohol now. She's the same age as my dad but people assume that they're mother and son. They're in their sixties but she looks 85-90. She won't leave the house, even pre-covid she left maybe six times a year. She's forgotten how to drive. She's forgotten how to use money. She's almost completely sedentary at home. She struggles to stand up now, even when sober, and she says it is because of her age but my dad walks 5-8 miles every day in all weather so it isn't her age. She's started to get what she calls 'tired eyes' and I'm struggling to understand what she means but it's something about how they won't stay still? I wouldn't be surprised if there's some kind of neurological damage going on.
I've tried everything. I've tried begging, pleading, ignoring, crying, getting angry, distracting her, bargaining and nothing makes a dent. I told her that she drinks too much and she says "I didn't drink when you were a child so I deserve to drink now" but a) I think that she probably did and b) she obviously wasn't drinking for a reason when I was in my late teens so, considering she's smoked for over 40 years and isn't health-conscious, she must have known not to drink somehow.
I've told her she'll die and she says "that's fine, this is how I want to die." I've told her that her dying affects me and she shrugs her shoulders and says that she's "an adult and can do what she wants". I've shown her photos of people in late stage liver disease/failure and told her that's what is coming and she says "oh well, we've all got to die of something."
I honestly think that she thinks she isn't an alcoholic because she doesn't drink first thing in the morning and she isn't the stereotypical 'homeless drunk on a park bench' but that's exactly where she'd be if my dad wasn't working and able to keep a roof over their heads. She tells me that the amount she drinks isn't a big deal and if I was normal and 'understood how the world works' (I'm currently waiting for an autism evaluation) that I'd understand that she drinks a perfectly normal amount and would stop nagging her when she clearly doesn't have a problem. I've tried to get through to my dad multiple times but he says "that's just how she is" and isn't willing to help them both change.
I honestly feel like it is only a matter of time before she dies, either choking or falling or ending up with liver failure. I feel guilty for thinking it but I hope she dies before my dad does. He has the slightest chance of being able to cope without her but if he goes first she's no chance.
I'm absolutely tee-total after seeing what's happened to her but one of the things that hurts the most is how they both try and push me to drinking when I do see them. I'm always 'ruining the fun' and 'oh just have one' and 'live a little'.
Ever since her breakdown I've felt like I need to be the glue that holds her mental health together. I suffer from my own mental health challenges (I was diagnosed with depression at 14 but my parents forbid me to get treatment and told me I'd be a bad person if I did so I'm only now getting help at 34 after realising that their approach to mental health is not helpful.)
I have felt so much guilt for so long that I haven't been able to fix her but reading this thread has helped me realise that maybe it isn't my job to fix her. I love her, and I'll always be here for her if she wants help but I need to be able to talk about this, I can't let her keep pouring all her trauma into me without being allowed to have a way to let it out. I think when they are open in real life I'll try and go to an al anon meeting - at least one, to see if it helps.
Sorry for the very long post but this has been building up for the past 10 years and it's the first time I've felt able to put my thoughts down. Just for peace of mind - she is an alcoholic right? This isn't normal behaviour / a normal amount of drink that I just think is too much because I don't understand?
). The day I decided to stop binge drinking I knew it's not like I'm never going to drink again, I just didn't want alcohol to be such a big part of my life. At times it was very hard not to order a beer or wine when out with friends and everyone around me was having a pint, my hand were itching for a drink. But I knew that if I drink in front of people once they will know I drank and next time we saw each other it would be hard to explain why I'm not drinking. So I didn't. And I won't. That glass of wine 2-3 times a year will be my only contact with alcohol.
